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Friday, July 30, 2010

Just Keep Trying

I got home from work at the library the other day and found my husband outside trying to bend a bumper with his bare hands so he could get the crosspiece back into place. He's restoring a '67 Volkswagen Bus and had taken apart the bumper to paint it. Yes, I'm sure he could have gone and purchased the correct tools, but bother! He wanted to get it done right that moment. Well, right now turned into an hour or so of pulling and tugging and pushing. And who got talked into helping? Me, of course.

After helping him for what seemed like forever (I have a short attention span for things that involve trying to force pieces of metal into places they don't want to go) I said something about how it wasn't going to work. But he was determined. He knew what needed to be done. He knew he could do it. "We just needed to keep trying," he insisted. So we kept pushing and pulling and bending, and all of a sudden we got it, and it fell into place so easily and (seemingly) quickly.

It was a simple yet brilliant reminder for writing life. Write, revise, repeat. Query. Submit. Know what needs to be done. Work hard to gain the knowledge. You can do this. Just keep trying. All of a sudden things will fall into place.